One of the things I’ve discovered in using 3D games with people who don’t play them (at all) is that the concepts of moving and looking around the space can actually be quite challenging. I’ve had people actually report feeling a little nauseous from the experience, so the need for a very straight forward, highly directed instructional level became quickly apparent.
This is the initial stage of Playing the Game, my attempt to do this.
There’s still a fair slab of work to come but I think it’s on track.
Given the scaffolding nature of the skills being developed, it takes a fairly behaviourist directed learning approach, with each skill introduced and accomplished before the learner moves on to the next one.
Perhaps this is a display of my ignorance about academic writing but the fact that it takes Bannan-Ritland 7 pages to explain the method that she used to create this overview of academic writings that relate to interaction (particularly finding a definition for the term) seems pretty counter-productive and makes for some rather turgid reading. (Given that it only took her a couple of paragraphs to explain that there is a fair degree of difference of opinion in the writings about the definition)
Once she gets going though it gets much better and some interesting ideas about the nature of interaction are covered.
“Interaction can be viewed as a function of:
learners participation or active involvement
specific patterns and amounts of communication
instructor activities and feedback
social exchange or collaboration
instructional activities and affordances of the technology
She goes on to look at the papers that address each of these possible definitions and look at examples
Interactivity as defined by Active involvement by the learner
“the researchers concluded that students have specific goals for each interaction in an eLearning environment, including getting help or sharing information related to the content of the course, getting help on the technology, submitting homework and participating in discussion to exchange ideas of socializing”
The Gunawardena, Lowe and Anderson (1997) model of knowledge construction “relies on an active view of knowledge construction by the learner that moves through five phases, including:
sharing/comparing of information
discovery and exploration of dissonance or inconsistency among ideas, concepts or statements
negotiation of meaning and/or co-construction of knowledge
testing and modication of proposed synthesis or co-construction
phrasing of agreement, statements and applications of newly constructed meaning
Interactivity as defined by Patterns of Communication among learners/instructors
“Identifying the purpose of online messages as organizing, lecturing, humanizing or expressing opinions provided a detailed view of interaction patterns in an eLearning environment”
“Vrasidas and McIsaac (1999) explicitly and broadly defined interactivity as “reciprocal actions of two or more actors within a given context” (p. 25)… In addition, data on teacher and student views of interaction were collected, ultimately determining that multiple factors such as structure of course, class size, feedback and prior experience with CMC influence interaction”
“Synchronous communication was determined to be more interactive, demonstrating a type of discourse mimicking face-to-face interaction. Asynchronous communication was more constrained than synchronous but also more complex”
“Also in a small group context, Ahern and Durrington (1995-6) investigated the effects of anonymity and interaction in a computer-mediated discussion and found that anonymity promotes increased participation by students”
Interactivity defined as Instructor/Learner communication
“Mahesh and McIsaac (1999) operationalized interactivity as the dynamic of instructor-student communication and the actions of the instructor to encourage communication among students. Instructor time spent on these activities also provided an operational definition of interactivity in this study”
“These researchers concluded that eLearning is dependent on the personal and unique style of instructors and their activities in an online course as well as instructional and logistical factors”
Interactivity as Social, Cooperative or Collaborative Exchange
“…messages that asked questions, answered questions, provided support, clarified ideas, built consensus and contained social messages were interactive in nature. Asynchronous bulletin board conferencing provided more task-related messages and were more appropriate for self-reflection, while synchronous chat demonstrated more interactivity… and much less task-oriented communication”
Interactivity as a Range of Instructional Activities and Technologies
“Luetkehans (1999) determined that interactivity is most prominent in contexts where multiple strategies and activities, including instructor feedback, collaborative learning strategies and multiple technology mechanisms encourage student participation”
Bannan-Ritland moves on to examine the specific types of eLearning interactions identified in the literature
“structure, class size, feedback to students and participants prior experience with CMC are prominent variables related to interaction”
“teachers are more concerned about the level of participation and interaction with students in an eLearning course than a traditional one and… students stated that a lack of feedback from both instructors and their peers contributed to feelings of isolation and dissatisfaction with the course”
Bannan-Ritland identifies some gaps in the current research (or at least in the research she investigated)
“This review did not reveal any studies focusing on learner-non-human interactions, nor did the review reveal research that demonstrated the higher-level learner instruction interactions that incorporate a meta-level strategy or deliberate arrangement of events”
Some of the key findings that Bannan-Ritland drew from her review are that:
high levels of interaction need to be modeled by the instructor for students
a cooperative goal structure requiring students to interact with other students can promote interaction
Asynchronous and synchronous forms of communication afford different instructional strategies
instructor’s teaching style and background impacts course design, structure and level of interactivity implemented
small groups using asynchronous communication demonstrate task-directed behaviour in problem solving
instructors should expect to spend more time on an eLearning course than a traditional one
sychronous discussions are highly interactive and demonstrate more student control
asynchronous mode offers more complex language than synch and primarily demonstrated student responses to teacher requests
instructor or subject matter expert needed to draw out new concepts
pair advanced students as mentors to novices
promote issue-based introductory questions allowing students to develop own ideas and thoughts.
The summary of all the research papers at the end – broken down by focus, types of interactions and conclusions is the most useful part of this as it is packed with good practical tips.
In the constructivist philosophy, meaning is derived from the experiences gained while undertaking activities/tasks which are scaffolded by course content. The process of reflecting on these experiences and contextualising them with existing experiences helps to develop knowledge.
Feedback is a vital part of the reflection process as it introduces external ideas and extends the range of experiences and information that the learner is exposed to. It stands to reason then that the broader the range of feedback that a learner receives, the richer their reflection will be. Social web tools offer the possibility of feedback from a global audience.
Oliver (2004) points out that “Students involved in self evaluation are more interested in the criteria and substantive feedback than the grades achieved. The interest is piqued by the need for honesty in the application of the criteria for others (peer assessment) and to their own work as well as being able to defend opinions through evidence over subjective judgements.”
Brown & Voltz (2005) go on to say that “Experience becomes knowledge through reflection, which is enhanced by timely and appropriate criticism”.
On a practical level, “the range of available feedback strategies is vast, including reflective responses to prescribed questions, semi-automated responses by the system to student actions and work, shared comments in online forums and blogs and personal responses via email, telephone and post.”(Brown & Voltz, 2005).
It can be used in such a way that learners complete an initial draft of assessment work, post it publicly as an RFC (request for comment) and then incorporate feedback from the community into an updated final version.
Networked based learning offers opportunities for feedback from beyond the usual teacher and fellow students spectrum. The growth of the social web adds the notion of audience to the pool of sources of feedback – learners can now publish the work that they produce in class to the world and receive unvarnished feedback instantly which expands the range of knowledge being drawn on exponentially.
This notion of audience has been used in the Schools News Project. “The feedback from the community will inform the student teams of the quality of the product, its story telling qualities and its social responsibility in terms of ethical treatment of those whose stories have been included in the news items.” (Lockyer, Brown & Blackall, 2003).
The addition of information from the real world is one of the most exciting things about using the social web in education as it brings greater authenticity to the learning experience which heightens motivation.
It also has a useful side effect of developing greater levels of information, technological, critical and media literacy.
Practitioners (particularly those in the K-12 schools sector) considering making use of the social web will need to be mindful of the fact that it is a relatively uncontrolled environment and conscientious moderation of communication may be required. School and government policies may also determine the level of access learners are given to social web sites.
Lockyer, L., Brown, I. & Blackall, D. (2003). A learning design to support multi-literacy development in K-12 contexts. In A. Rossett (Ed.). Proceedings of E-Learn 2003 World Conference on E-Learning in Corporate, Government, Healthcare and Higher Education. (pp.1703-06) Norfolk, VA: Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education.
Oliver, R. (2004). Moving beyond instructional comfort zones with online courses.. In R.Atkinson, C. McBeath, D. Jonas-Dwyer & R. Phillips (Eds), Beyond the comfort zone: Proceedings of the 21st ASCILITE Conference (pp. 713-723). Perth, 5-8 December. http://www.ascilite.org.au/conferences/perth04/procs/oliver-r.html
The discussion board is a highly useful tool in network based learning, offering learners (and teachers) a space to collaborate and share information and opinions about course content and class work. As an asynchronous form of computer mediated communication, it provides flexibility, accessibility and a level playing field for learners who might not normally feel comfortable speaking up in a face-to-face class.
It’s important to recognise however, that an effective discussion board – one with regular, meaningful posts from a majority of the class – doesn’t run itself and it is the responsibility of a moderator (generally the teacher) to “initiate and sustain the interaction in a networked learning community”(Levin, 1999).
This is done initially through orientation and socialisation (Salmon, 2004) and by providing clear objectives and guidelines (Graham, Cagiltay, Lim, Craner & Duffy, 2001) for the use of the board.
Graham et al (2001) offer a number of practical suggestions for this:
“Discussions should be focused on a task”
“Learners should receive feedback on their discussions”
“Instructors should post expectations for discussions”
“Instructors can still give prompt feedback on discussion assignments by responding to the class as a whole instead of to each student”
This might involve contacting the learners individually at the start of the course to ensure they are able to access the discussion board, running a face-to-face orientation session to the technology, encouraging them to make a brief post about themselves (and comment on others) and offering clear information about the role discussion plays in subject assessment.
It could also involve driving discussion by posting relevant topics or “sparks” (Salmon, 2004) and responding to queries in a timely manner.
In my role as an educational multimedia designer, I regularly work with teachers at CIT (Canberra Institute of Technology) who don’t understand why their students aren’t making use of the discussion boards in their WebCT courses. Frequently it’s because the learners have been told that the board is there and have then been left to their own devices with it. Other times teachers regularly post discussion questions but don’t always follow up with feedback.
I must admit that the first time I had my multimedia students use individual blogs for their work/process journal with the aim of stimulating critical reflection, half of them thought they had to set up a new blog account each week and I’d offered no real guidelines on post length, specific content or frequency – so I am aware that it’s an area that requires a certain amount of thought as a designer.
Gilly Salmon’s 2004 book “e moderating – the guide to teaching and learning online” is a great resource for teachers looking for practical guidelines. She offers a 5 stage scaffolded model which moves from Access and Motivation to Online Socialisation to Information Exchange to Knowledge Construction and finally to Development, where learners largely drive discussion on their own.
Levin, J. (1999). Understanding the Lifecycles of Network-based Learning Communities. Paper presented at Symposium 6.29 “Indicators of Change in Computer-Based Community Building” Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association,Montreal, April 1999 . Retrieved 10 July 2006 from http://faculty.ed.uiuc.edu/j-levin/Levin-Cervantes.final.html
Salmon, G (2004) emoderating – the key to teaching and learning online (2nd ed.) London, UK. Taylor and Francis books ltd.
Graham, C., Cagiltay, K., Lim, B-R., Craner, J., & Duffy, T. M. (2001). Seven principles of effective teaching: A practical lens for evaluating online courses. The Technology Source Archives at the University of North Carolina
